June 23, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal— Italian Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci wrote in his Prison Notebooks, in 1930, that “the crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born. In this interregnum, a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” Gramsci was preoccupied with the breakdown and collapse of the liberal order which was the dominant pattern in international affairs after World War I. In particular, when struggling to understand the rise to power of Benito Mussolini, Gramsci used the term, “morbid phenomenon”. For Gramsci, Mussolini was one such morbid symptom. The term “interregnum” was originally used to denote a time-lag separating the death of one royal sovereign from the enthronement of the successor. Interregnum here, as referred by Gramsci, can be understood with a new wider meaning as a period where one arrangement of hegemony is waning, but prior to the full emergence of another.

Charles Kuttner’s important new book is perhaps the most radical of these, making a trenchant critique of globalised capitalism and proposing sweeping reforms to rebuild a mixed economy which works in the interests of everyone (especially workers) and pumps life back into liberal demonocracy. Basing himself on the work of his hero Karl Polanyi [2] Kuttner’s basic message is that unless major reforms are made within capitalism, then fascism or right-wing authoritarianism is virtually inevitable.

February 10, 2017 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — February 6 marked the 80th anniversary of the start of the “Battle of Jarama” during the Spanish Civil War, as left-wing and democratic forces fought to stop the fascist forces of General Franco taking power.

Alongside the Battle of Madrid, the Battle of Jarama is commonly associated with the participation of the International Brigades — volunteers, often organised by Communist parties, who travelled from around the world to Spain to join the anti-fascist fight in defence of the 1931-39 Spanish Republic.

Following Franco’s failure to take Madrid in October-November 1936, the fascist forces attempted a military offensive in February 1937 on the western flank of the Spanish Republic forces, alongside the river Jarama. While the offensive failed, and the counter-offensives by the Republican forces effectively turned the battle into a stalemate, the battle itself became synonymous with the military, political and moral contribution of the International Brigades to the anti-fascist struggle.

Holding the frontline at Jarama were thousands of volunteers from Britain, Ireland, United States, Italy, France, Belgium and many others who came from around the world to defend Spanish democracy against Franco, Hitler and Mussolini.

Among a handful of surviving International Brigadiers remaining today is José Almudéver Mateu.

January 8, 2017 –– Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal –– Barack Obama declared to CNN this past December 26 that he could have beaten Donald Trump had he the chance to run against the president elect for a third term, but he may have done more than anyone else to assure Trump’s victory.

While Trump’s election has triggered a rapid expansion of fascist currents in US civil society and the political system, a fascist outcome is far from inevitable and will depend on the fight back that has already begun. But that fight back requires clarity as to how we got to such a dangerous precipice. The seeds of a 21st century fascism were planted, fertilized, and watered by the government of outgoing president Barack Obama and the bankrupt liberal elite that Obama’s presidency represents.

September 27, 2016 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Red Wedge with the author's permission — In the Spring of 1940, as the Nazis conquered France and were the dominant power on the European continent, the exiled German Marxist philosopher Walter Benjamin wrote his final work, Theses on the Philosophy of History. In a moment of political defeat, with fascism triumphant, the parties of the far left lying prostrate and subjugated, Benjamin penned the following words:

The subject of historical cognition is the battling, oppressed class itself. In Marx it steps forwards as the final enslaved and avenging class, which carries out the work of emancipation in the name of generations of downtrodden to its conclusion. This consciousness, which for a short time made itself felt in the “Spartacus” [Spartacist splinter group, the forerunner to the German Communist Party], was objectionable to social democracy from the very beginning. In the course of three decades it succeeded in almost completely erasing the name of Blanqui, whose distant thunder [Erzklang] had made the preceding century tremble. [1]

June 22,
2015 – Links International Journal of
Socialist Renewal -- The purpose of the Red History Lecture Series since
its inception has been to discuss lesser known or neglected socialist and
communist figures, movements, and events. So it may be rightfully asked – why
discuss Antonio Gramsci?

Gramsci is
fairly well known with his work easily available and ideas discussed in
universities, countless commentaries and elsewhere. However, there is something
potentially worse than obscurity and neglect, and that is to be misunderstood.
Unfortunately, that is the fate which has befallen Gramsci.

Communist Party of Germany (KPD) member Paul Levi played a leading role in several debates.

By John Riddell

December 4, 2011 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal, for more articles by John Riddell, go to http://johnriddell.wordpress.com -- Until recently, I shared a widely held opinion that the Bolshevik
Party of Russia towered above other members of the early Communist
International as a source of fruitful political initiatives. However, my
work in preparing the English edition of the Comintern’s Fourth
Congress, held at the end of 1922, led me to modify this view.(1) On a
number of weighty strategic issues before the congress, front-line
parties, especially the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), played a
decisive role in revising executive committee proposals and shaping the
Congress’s outcome.]

When I translated the first page of this congress, I was not far
distant from the view of Tony Cliff, who, referring to the 1921–22
period, referred to the “extreme comparative backwardness of communist
leaders outside Russia”. They had an “uncritical attitude towards the
Russian party”, which stood as “a giant among dwarfs”, Cliff stated.(2)